


help me hold onto you

by shipatfirstsight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant to a certain point, Character Study, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, lol I can't write summaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22071679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipatfirstsight/pseuds/shipatfirstsight
Summary: Holding her in his arms-- dead , his brain told him, while his heart and his soul clenched in pain, retreating from that truth--he’d never felt more isolated from everyone and everything. He’d heard the Jedi calling out to her when she’d battled Palpatine, when he’d been struggling to rise-- by himself, no one urging him on --and he looked for them now, pleading with them to be with him, to help him help her.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 119





	help me hold onto you

Holding her in his arms-- _dead_ , his brain told him, while his heart and his soul clenched in pain, retreating from that truth--he’d never felt more isolated from everyone and everything. He’d heard the Jedi calling out to her when she’d battled Palpatine, when he’d been struggling to rise-- _by himself, no one urging him on_ \--and he looked for them now, pleading with them to be with him, to help him help her. 

Ben Solo had always been alone--his family saw Vader in him and so he found himself isolated from them even when he was surrounded by them. He was alone against Snoke, though if Palpatine was to be trusted--doubtful--it had really been him all along. He was alone no matter who he was with--alone with himself and his choices and the weight of a legacy he was not sure he wanted. 

For a while he had thought he wasn’t alone in the Force at least--he had that to connect him to the other students at Luke’s academy. He couldn’t be alone with that, with his uncle, whose stories and struggles between light and dark he’d grown up hearing about, despite his family trying to hide it from him. He wasn’t the only one who struggled, and it was a small comfort but a comfort all the same. 

But it still hurt to know his family didn’t trust him enough to just tell him. 

They knew he was struggling, knew that there was something in him that was not fully of the light, and they kept secrets from him, thinking that if they hid what he was descended from everything would be fine.

Then--the revelation that his grandfather, _Anakin Skywalker_ , the hero of the Republic, his _grandfather_ had really been Darth Vader. 

Did it matter, he’d wondered, that he’d saved his son? With everything he’d done, did that small act _matter_ , did it change who Vader had been? 

He’d understood then. His family was afraid that he would become his grandfather. And Snoke wanted him to. None of them saw _him_ , stuck between light and dark. He was a man whose parents had given up on him long before he’d turned, and they had all _known_ , _expected_ him to fall. None of them had known when or where, but they’d all waited for it. It was a surprise to no one but him.

“Your family couldn’t protect you from me,” Snoke told him once, sneering and mocking, when he’d failed at some aspect of his new training, when he’d hesitated before a kill, “they didn’t even _try_ . Use it. Use your anger at them. You _are_ alone and it is _their_ fault. Do you want them to win this war? Make them regret what they did to you.”

And he had. But with every hour of every day he’d felt more and more alone. Killing his father hadn’t felt right--it hadn’t felt like revenge or restitution. All he’d felt was more alone--and he’d known that he’d severed all ties to his family, blood or otherwise, forever. They would never have him back now, never forgive him for _this_ , and he would always be alone, a tool for a cause, a cog in Snoke’s machine. Kylo Ren. 

He was a mask, a shadow. Stripped of everything that he had been as a child to be this. He led the Knights of Ren. He was feared. He was a nightmare. None of it, none of the power or the fear made him feel less alone. None of it healed the part of him that wanted to be understood, that wanted to be more than what everyone saw and expected from him. 

Until the girl, the scavenger, _Rey_. 

A monster in a mask she’d called him, and he’d wanted her to see that there was more to him than that. Just a small spark then, the smallest hint of _something_. He hadn’t even known her name, then. It was hard to see her as just another prisoner, just another duty, just another bad choice in a series of bad choices. 

But she was like _him_ . She felt alone and abandoned by everyone. And she was so _angry_ about it, the darkness in her like a well, deeper even than his own. Hers was older, fostered by her solitude. And he knew she’d felt the same emotions from him. 

“Don’t be afraid,” he’d told her, for her and for himself, “I feel it too.” Whatever _it_ was the strange, magic feeling gripping him. 

_Rey_ , he’d whisper, once he’d known her name, hating the impulse but savoring the sound of her name on his lips. In another life, another universe, maybe...but he cut those painful thoughts off before they could take root and hurt him more. _Rey, Rey, Rey_.

The force bond between them was...a miracle. Whether or not either of them liked it, they were truly, deeply no longer solitary beings. 

_You’re not alone_ , he’d told her because he needed her to know that she had _him_ at least, even if that was a small comfort for her. 

_Neither are you_ , she’d told him, without hesitation, and it felt like salvation.

She’d come for him, against everything, because she saw _Ben_ in him still, though he’d tried and tried to drive that part of himself out. Through all that followed, he’d had one enduring thought, that he wasn’t alone with her, for the first time someone saw him, him through all the masks he wore. That she _wanted_ to forgive him for what he’d done; that what he’d done wasn’t enough to lose her forever. Snoke telling them that _he_ had formed the connection between them, so obviously a lie to take away something that meant _something_ to the person who was Kylo Ren and Ben at once, had only solidified who his real enemy was. And he couldn’t kill her then, couldn’t obey Snoke’s orders. So he’d killed Snoke instead and fought side by side with Rey, instinctively matching her moves, and she’d _saved_ him when he needed it.

Fighting with her then, when they’d realized they wanted different things, had felt wrong, a betrayal of something. 

She’d ignored him through the months afterwards, and he’d felt her disappointment and _anger_ that he hadn’t chosen to go with her. That it hadn’t been enough. Ridiculous, he’d thought, to want to comfort her when he was just as angry and disappointed in her. Still, it was a comfort to know that he wasn’t wholly isolated in the galaxy. That she was there to ignore him. Until everything came to a head and neither of them could pretend any more---the bond between them making it harder and harder to run away from each other. 

He’d felt his mother’s death, heard her call out to him for the first and last time---a bid to win the war, a dark part of him whispered in the recesses of his mind--but that thought didn’t matter because, despite everything, he’d _loved_ his mother. And so quickly, she was gone from him, forever. 

Then Rey had stabbed him, and healed him. Everything had shifted irrevocably in him with his mother’s death, and he felt the same shift in her when she drove his own lightsaber into him. He’d wanted to comfort her, wipe the tears off of her cheeks, but he didn’t know how. His mother, he remembered, when his childhood pet had died, had known exactly what to do, wrapping him in her arms and cancelling meetings and being with him for once. When had he forgotten that? When had everything gone bad and wrong? 

Maybe, he thought, watching Rey take his ship, he had played a role in isolating himself even before his family had become afraid of what he would be. The conversations he’d overheard, the fear in their eyes had contributed, but he had pulled away too. _I was a child_ , he wanted to remind all of them, dead and gone now, and he hadn’t trusted them enough to believe they would want to save him. Not wholly their fault, not wholly his, though he alone bore the responsibility for the choices he’d made. Palpatine, and Snoke through him, had been the real enemy and they were all letting him _win_.

His father--not there, but with him always anyway--provided the final clarity he needed.

He wasn’t going to let Palpatine take the light in Rey and snuff it out. She might need him, and that was all he needed to raid the husk of the death star for a half-working, decrepit TIE and cobble it together enough to get him back to Exegol. 

It was so easy to return to the light, to use the light side again, to carry that legacy lightsaber and fight to reach her side. 

Not being alone made everything worse, though. His mistake. Rey might have turned to the dark side without him there to _help_ , but them together, dyad, together and more powerful because of it, gave Palpatine what he really wanted. He would have fought for her if she had turned, to bring her back, as she had fought for him. This, being thrown away from her, forced to feel her life leave her body, was worse. 

Crawling to her, stumbling along, he knew it was too late, but still he struggled back to her side. 

Holding her dead in his arms, he knew what it was to be really alone for the first time.

He wasn’t going to let her go.

Ben Solo understood what it would cost him to bring her back on his own, but Rey deserved to live. It would be a small sacrifice, to trade his life for hers. 

He knows he will have to leave her, even as she shifts in his arms, sitting up and kissing him and making him feel complete, filling him with so much joy. 

He is torn from his body suddenly and without warning and he _regrets._ Not saving her, never that, but being forced to leave her, never getting to know what could be.

* * *

Rey feels nothing for a terrifying moment looking down at his body. Sadness and confusion and there at the edges, but she doesn’t really feel them. Shock, her mind supplies.

People left her. Her parents for her own protection---and she’d deal with that later because regardless of their intentions they had _sold_ her. Poe, Rose, and Finn on the other hand--they might not willingly leave her behind but she felt like they were on different paths, crossing occasionally, but never staying together long. It didn’t make it hurt any less; they needed her abilities, whether with flying or with the force. She wondered, sometimes, in her most lonely moments, if she could be replaced with them if someone with similar skills came along.

Despite everything, everything separating them, she hadn’t thought Ben would ever leave her. She’d despaired it at times, wishing that he would be like everyone else and leave her. But he was as powerless in the face of their bond as she was. He didn’t have a choice either, but he didn’t seem to mind---at least not as much as she did---those moments when their minds joined and called out to each other across the stars. 

She hated the reason why he had left her. To save her, when they could _finally---_

She wasn’t going to lose him. 

“Bring him back,” she pleads in a whisper. She didn’t have the strength to bring him back alone; she needed them to help her.

“Bring him back,” louder, more forceful, ignoring the tears finally streaming down her cheeks. “Now. Do it.”

It doesn’t matter to her who hears it, who listens, light or dark, the dead Jedi or the dead Sith, the Force itself, she just wants him back. 

Rey pulls his body back up, ignoring the way the corners of his body seem to blur, losing colour and definition. She’ll pull him back to life if she has to, tether him to _here_ with her. She holds his body to hers, a vague impression floating through her mind of him doing this with her, her heart clenching painfully, the feeling of loss almost overwhelming her. She feels it in her soul--he’s gone from her. 

“I won’t give him up. Bring him back,” she is ordering them now, angry and scared, and so, so lost. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

This was not the bright, shining future she’d seen where they’d been together. Not the dark, twisted one either, where they ruled over the galaxy by each other’s sides. Every future had been them together, though, and she buried her face in his neck, feeling the way the warmth leached from him.

“Please,” she tries one last time, one last desperate plea. “I love him.”

One by one, four Force ghosts step around her. She doesn’t look up to see them, but she feels them around her.

“We do this for you, Rey,” a voice she think belongs to Obi-Wan says as the force starts to flow through Ben’s body, “for the boy he was, and the man he has become.”

“For my son,” Leia confirms, placing her hand on his shoulder and letting force energy pass between them. Rey looks up finally, and they all smile at her, the figure of Luke easily recognizable beside a man she cannot place. “I loved him through it all. He will live, finally, free of what we could not see.”

“For my nephew,” Luke smiles, adding his hand, ruffling Ben’s hair, “Tell the kid I’m sorry, Rey. I should have seen, should have helped him.”

“Why can’t you tell him yourself?” Rey asks, despair that had been lessening as she felt Ben start to return to his body returning in full force. “He should hear it from you. He should--he should get the chance to make things right with you.”

Leia shakes her head. “We will not be able to speak with you again.”

The final man steps closer, kneeling beside them and gripping Ben’s hand. “We make this choice for my grandson, willingly.”

“You said you’d be with me,” she pleads, even as she does not want them to stop healing Ben, bringing him back to her.

“The Jedi will be, Rey,” Luke soothes, “and we will not really be _gone_ , but there must be a sacrifice for this.”

Ben gasps in her arms, clutching her to him as the figures fade away. _Thank you_ , she doesn’t say out loud, and hopes they hear, even as she eases back from Ben slightly, running her eyes over his face, watching the way his chest moves up and down, the pulse jumping in his throat. _Alive_ , she reassures herself, _he’s alive_. 

The smile that spreads over his face once more is beautiful, and she can’t help leaning back in, kissing him with the same fervor as before, joy this time that _he’s_ back with her, alive and here. 

“Rey,” he breathes later, against her lips, “Rey.” He traces her lips with his tongue, moves his mouth over her cheek, then her brow, then down to the pulse in her throat. “I love you.”

No longer alone, no longer left behind, the two of them set out back to life.

* * *

Naboo is beautiful this time of day, Ben reflects, content with Rey sleeping against his chest. The water is calm here. He wipes the loose strands of hair off of her face, staring back over the water. They’ll have to return soon, he muses, back to the rebellion that is reforming into the Republic. There is always work to be done, but they needed space to breath for a moment, together. They had things that needed doing; building new lightsabers for themselves, laying Anakin, Leia, and Luke’s lightsabers to rest, saying their goodbyes. Nowhere seemed more fitting than here where his grandfather was happy and where Leia and Luke never got to grow up.

“I wonder if I’ll ever stop being surprised that so much green and water can exist in the galaxy,” Rey had said when they first stepped off the Falcon. And he’d held her later when she cried and raged over the choices her parents had made.

It wasn’t easy, always. Both of them had a hard time leaving the other’s side--both woke in the night and checked to make sure the other was still there and alive. The suspicions and mistrust surrounding him and his name wouldn’t be easy to leave behind. They were making their way, though. Together.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!


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